Voom is scolding me for not doing my weekly updates, so I will try to be good and do as he instructs.

The main reason I haven't been dong weekly updates is that as I spend more and more time on the business/management side of SS I get less time to spend programming and doing content, so I get a little embarrassed that I have so little to report. But I can talk about what I have been working on and some SS stuff in general.

First off, client2 is coming along really well. The GUI is totally done and the models and visage system are gong in right now. Jon is now working on client2 things as well as our contractor and I'm hoping we can be feature complete in 1 or 2 months.

The last major patch had a lot of code changes under the hood. This was all rewriting of some hacky data structures that were making multithreading very difficult. I was working on updating and testing the multithreaded code some last week, but then I stupidly upgraded my Ubuntu box to Hardy Heron which totally broken my dev environment. I've been trying to get things working again for the last couple days, and probably today I'm going to wipe everything and reinstall the last version.

The second DB server that we added a little while ago seems to have helped a lot with the lag. We still get occasional lag spikes while doing DB queries, and that is the main thing that my multithreading code is trying to address.

Overall, the near-term plan is to address lag, disconnects, and bugs to get the game smooth and working for everyone, improve the new player experience, add client2, then have some explosive growth.

We have also been discussing some game mechanics rebalances that we would like to do before launching client2 and the hoped-for explosive growth we get once that launches. Under discussion are rebalancing the energies yet again, reworking the formulas for augs, and reworking the visibility/stealth formulas. I know that players generally hate it when things like this get changed, since they have planned and worked for things assuming the current stats and mechanics. We will give plenty of advance warning (hopefully a month at least) once we've decided on what changes we want to make and give the players a chance to give feedback.

The other day, we hit 854 paying subs which is a new record. The subscription growth has been pretty flat for the last few months since the Comcast thing hit and I stopped advertising in the US since I figure why spend money on advertising when half the people are getting disconnects and are not likely to have a favorable impression of the game. We had 16 new p2p sign ups in the last 6 days, which is pretty decent, and I hope a testament to the very much improved preload.

_________________For support, please create a support ticket here and I will get back to you as soon as possible. About Star Sonata.

Tue Jul 08, 2008 1:13 pm

Jester_Motley

Member

Team: Rank: OfficerMain: FoolLevel: 3024

Joined: Sat May 27, 2006 2:52 amPosts: 180

Re: Weekly Update 7-8

What problems with Hardy? Been working like gold for me on all 5 of my systems. Well, my laptop took a few adjustments before I got it all working.

Nice update, and it's good to hear from you, and all of the devs about the work being done on stability and content.

While you may not think you have much to update, and you may not, simply saying even that, would help go miles towards better relations with the players. If nothing else, they let us know that we aren't being ignored or forgotten.

Tue Jul 08, 2008 2:13 pm

JeffL

Site Admin / Dev Team

Team: Rank: DirectorMain: Jeff_LLevel: 1968

Joined: Wed Mar 23, 2005 2:21 amPosts: 3891Location: Santa Clara, CA

Re: Weekly Update 7-8

After I installed Hardy, the server will no longer compile under KDevelop. It keeps giving me errors about a circular dependency in the project although I can't find any such thing and didn't change any code -- just did the update.

Its a work in progress, obviously it lacks polish that will go in later.

Tue Jul 08, 2008 5:36 pm

saran

Team: Rank: OperatorMain: goldstar719Level: 2047

Joined: Sun Nov 13, 2005 12:54 pmPosts: 1174

Re: Weekly Update 7-8

absolutely wonderful to hear back from our devs. and thanks so much for giving us warning for energies and such.. it does hurt quite a bit when an expensive setup that took a wile to build goes out the window. :p

hopefully C2 will give us that explosive growth you were talking about. i can hardly wait! im sure C2 will be totally awsome when its out.

_________________

Tue Jul 08, 2008 7:16 pm

Dagon

Team: Rank: OfficerMain: BWO Com.Level: 1175

Joined: Thu Mar 16, 2006 5:09 pmPosts: 11Location: From that place...

Re: Weekly Update 7-8

I know this really isnt the place for it, but if you live in the US and can get Bellsouth DSL get it, thats what i use and i dont Disconnect at all hardly

_________________OI, in the words of...me: I might be CRAZY, but i am NOT STUPID

Tue Jul 08, 2008 7:37 pm

trevor54

Team: Rank: CouncilorMain: TrevorLevel: 5074

Joined: Wed Jul 12, 2006 10:01 pmPosts: 4162Location: Alabama

Re: Weekly Update 7-8

or get Jays fix, Anyways, Jeff when you talk about revamp, is it a huge nerf of a small one...

O and What do admins think about somthing like this.. the nerf to energies when it comes will be realy harsh. Bc To be realy fair Messing with the enegies is a big deal , although they should be tweaked....it will cause alot of problems so an aug reset wouldnt be 2 bad.

_________________Stay strong, live long, and walk humbly.

Tue Jul 08, 2008 9:11 pm

FriendlyPaperclip

PR Admin

Joined: Thu May 29, 2008 12:00 amPosts: 94

Re: Weekly Update 7-8

trevor54 wrote:

or get Jays fix, Anyways, Jeff when you talk about revamp, is it a huge nerf of a small one...

O and What do admins think about somthing like this.. the nerf to energies when it comes will be realy harsh. Bc To be realy fair Messing with the enegies is a big deal , although they should be tweaked....it will cause alot of problems so an aug reset wouldnt be 2 bad.

Don't go and assume things again, it's a revamp, not neccisarily a nerf.

An aug reset is an idea that is left open everytime we make a big change, but no promises are made. Aug resets for every ship on an acc are quite detrimental to the balance we have, it suddenly inflates the supply of augmenters that used to be either permanent, or there'd be a base-cost involved in unequiping them. Many slave-form ships also suddenly enter the market making them easier to obtain than they should, and taking away much of the reward of obtaining these ships or augs as everyone's selling them suddenly.

I'm thinking we could make a an aug tweak mission and give every character a neurobound item somehow that is required by the mission to complete. This way players could only reset a single ship, they could choose which one they'd want to have reset.

I'm not entirely up to date on what the aug reset policy is and what the precedent is for this issue. But to awnser your question of wether there'll be an aug reset, no promises.

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